The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Packet processors perform various functions in communication networks, such as packet switching and packet routing. At least some of these functions require a packet processor to temporarily store a copy of a packet while various other processing is performed. If insufficient resources are available, the packet processor is unable to store the data packet and the packet may be dropped.
Different levels of service may be provided based upon properties of packets. In some scenarios, a packet processor assigns a higher level of service to packets representing interactive traffic than to packets representing bulk file transfers, for example. In other scenarios, the packet processor guarantees a specified bandwidth to some types of traffic and limits the bandwidth available to other types of traffic, for example.